In the Republic of Moldova, approximately 180,000 people work informally. This means that they do not have an employment contract or, if they do have one, a part of their salary is paid off the books. According to Minister of Labor and Social Protection Alexei Buzu, unreported employment is a serious problem and the authorities are looking for solutions to combat it, IPN reports.
In a press conference, the minister said that besides the fact that there are few people on the labor market, 22% of them work informally. People who work informally cannot benefit from labor rights, social rights and they do not fully contribute to the social insurance budget.
“This year, we launched a number of initiatives in this regard (to combat illicit work). The most important of these referred to the reform of the State Labor Inspectorate. Here we introduced several new processes, unannounced checks based on risk criteria. We replaced the team and management. This way, the State Labor Inspectorate in 2022 identified 82 people who worked illegally, without employment contracts, while the employees of the Reformed Inspectorate identified 200 people in a month and a half,” said Alexei Buzu.
According to him, the formalization of the informal economy is important for the Ministry and the authorities estimate that most of the people found without employment contracts will pass to formal arrangements.
